Can I Keep My Jersey?

by Paul Shirley

  After the triumph over the Belgians I went out to eat with Zan Tabak, a seven-foot Croatian who is one of my teammates. (I should have written “triumph over the naturalized Americans.” Like most European leagues, the league in Belgium allows each team to employ only two Americans. The team we played had four, but two of them had European passports—a common move in Europe. If one can prove European ancestry or if he marries a European woman, dual citizenship can be granted. A European passport allows players to circumvent the two-American limit and, thus, to drive up their own salaries. I’m still searching for the European girl who will be open to that particular business arrangement.)

  Zan played for seven years in the NBA, most notably with the Indiana Pacers. He is one of two Croatians on our team, the other being the aforementioned fellow who struggled to find his way to the restaurant after our most recent game. Like most of the Yugoslavians I have met, Zan is quite worldly and thoughtful. During our meal, I asked him why he had come back to Europe after so many years in the NBA, even when he had offers from the American league for future years. He said that, first, it was important for him to enjoy playing the game the right way. He noted how much more pride European players take in winning. He talked about his constant disappointment with American players and their selfish attitudes. But most important, he said, he grew tired of the American way of approaching life. His take on it was the following: “In America, the people are only interested in the things you can touch—the car, the house, the TV. In Europe, the people are interested in things you cannot touch—the friendships, the love, the relationships.” It comes out sounding a little hokey, but I think there is something to be learned in that quote from a gigantic Croat who started playing professional basketball at age sixteen.

  February 23

  While on road trips, we eat nearly all of our meals as a team, as provided to us by the hotel in which we are staying. Positive aspect of that arrangement: free food. Negative aspect: rather eclectic food selections. During a recent meal, I was faced with the following scenario: I was served a bed of white rice with a six-inch piece of off-brown matter lying drably across it. When I inquired as to the identity of the object that was scarring my pleasant-looking hill of rice, I was informed that I was looking at a fried banana. On my rice. Before I knew what was happening, a waiter began dumping tomato sauce over the whole confabulation. Soon after, he piled two fried eggs on top of the cornucopia of food groups and left me to my own devices. I looked to a teammate across the table with eyes that asked, Did that really just happen? Receiving no sympathy from my compatriots, I followed along and mashed it all together as if it were some kind of jambalaya from hell and ate it. And…it wasn’t bad. The taste balance was tenuous, though. As long as the fork corralled at least three of the four constituents, things were A-OK. It was when only two were present—perhaps a piece of egg combined with a piece of banana—that I had to make a spastic grab for my water glass.

  Overall, I have been unimpressed with Spanish food. Spaniards seem to have a fascination with canned tuna, which is an initial mark against their culinary instincts. In my mind, canned tuna is a last-resort food item—something to be consumed only when the other remaining options are bologna or Long John Silver’s. Here in Spain, I was faced with the tuna crisis within hours of arriving in the country. When I was subjected to the über-physical, my first meal in the hospital cafeteria was based around a goulash-like substance (pasta shells with meat sauce) that used tuna instead of ground beef or chicken. Since I felt like I had just put the wraps on my own personal Bataan death march and could not see that I had another option, I forced it down and chalked the experience up to a bad cafeteria day, like spoonburger day (completely obscure childhood reference) back in grade school.

  Since then, every Spanish salad to which I have been exposed has been topped with nearly a pound of canned tuna. Does this not break some rule? I cannot imagine what would possess a person to willingly place slimy canned tuna on top of crisp, green lettuce and freshly chopped carrots. The solution, to an outsider’s eye, would be to push the fish to the side and carry on with salad consumption. That outsider would be one who is not intimately familiar with the properties of tuna. Tuna will not be confined. Banish it to the side of the plate—it doesn’t care. It knows it has effectively contaminated the salad with its permeating funk, making the use of oil and vinegar a futile exercise. I never thought a fish could be so powerful and so ubiquitous. The only possible explanation involves Spain’s president, a bad day at the international bargaining table, and a poorly translated arms deal with Syria, wherein the term tuna was misused as slang for cash or biological weaponry. So because someone spent the night before the big negotiations with a few belly dancers and a hookah, the Spanish people are faced with a surplus of ten million tons of tuna.

  A few days ago, I was playing some basketball, minding my own business while trying to get through the last half hour of practice, when I ran into Zan Tabak’s chest. With my head. As I fell to the floor, I could not figure out what had just happened. By the time my body flopped limply to the floor, I had decided that I had separated my shoulder, broken either my collarbone or my back, or taken a bullet to the neck. It felt a lot like someone was actively pouring fire into the top of my spinal column, through my back, and straight down my right arm, all the way to my hand. I flopped around on the floor for a bit and tried to find a position that would not send awe-inspiring pain shooting through my body. I am sure that I looked—as my father would say—like I didn’t know whether I was stabbed or shot. I have felt some pain in my life; this was the easily the worst. When I finally settled down, I found that my right arm and shoulder were completely numb. The team doctor/trainer/some guy who appeared to know what he was doing arrived on the scene and attempted to convince me to lay my head back. Which allowed me to revisit the feeling that my spinal column was being cauterized. At that point, I am unhappy to admit, I let out a healthy shriek. It was pretty girlish. (I write girlish, but that is a poor generalization. Most of the females I know have a much higher threshold for pain than most of the males I know. And we need only look to childbirth for further proof. So maybe I should say that it was a boyish shriek.) The point being that my teammates will probably not rate me highly on any manliness scales.

  By the time I shuffled to the locker room to assess the damage, I could feel my arm and shoulder again, which was encouraging. I was nonplussed to find that movement of my head caused shooting electric sensations down my arm and back. The doctor gave me an anti-inflammatory shot, scheduled an MRI for the next morning, and sent me home. When I got to my apartment, my body had settled enough that I was left only with numbness and tingling in my right thumb and forefinger. But when I touched anything with either of those digits, shock waves coursed through my entire body. Which sounds like a lot more fun than it actually is. Also, if I moved my head the right (or wrong) way, I felt tingles up and down my back. I had not received a real diagnosis of the problem from the Spanish doctors as they (1) did not seem to know what was going on and (2) do not speak much English. Since I had no experience with nerve injuries, I was a little concerned with the situation. I kept wiggling my toes, just to make sure I could still feel them. I was very much afraid to go to sleep—I kept envisioning awakening to find that I was paralyzed from the waist down. (Ever the optimist. At least my mind didn’t jump straight to quadriplegia. I must be making psychological progress.)

  The MRI showed no spinal or disk injury, so I began physical therapy and treatment. I have not practiced or played this week; my right hand remains completely useless, and the slightest touch to my thumb continues to bring to mind the grasping of an electric fence. As a bonus, I was started on a program that results in three daily injections in my ass, which has been thoroughly pleasant.

  Despite my injured state, I finally made my way down to the beach. It is all of a five-minute walk from the door of my apartment, so it is easy to see why it took me ten days to get that done. I live life
at a slower pace than the rest of humanity. “My” beach is rather nice. Real sand—none of that half-gravel crap to which I had grown accustomed in Athens. Quality-sized waves, seashells, sunbathers—it has all the accoutrements. And I live in Kansas for what reason again?

  My team took a break from regular-season games to play the Copa del Rey (King’s Cup) which matches the top eight teams in Spain in a midseason tournament that takes place over four days. Because of the injury to the wiring of my body, I merely observed our participation in the tournament. Even without my electric presence on the court, the Copa provided an amazing basketball atmosphere. It was reminiscent of a collegiate conference tournament. The teams all stayed in the same hotel, with agents, scouts, and fans all milling about, mingling with players and the general populace. The games were played in a sold-out nine-thousand-seat arena; fans traveled from all over Spain to follow their chosen team. Because only the best teams in Spain played, there were no soft games and the intensity remained high throughout. It really was the best basketball I have seen since the NCAA tournament. The games I watched were about twenty times more compelling than the average NBA contest. I wish more people from the United States could see good European basketball; it reminds a person of the beautiful thing the game can be.

  European basketball is more interesting because everyone on the court is a threat to score. It is rare to find players who cannot shoot, pass, and handle the ball. Of course, as more and more Europeans make their way into the NBA, the world will begin to understand how advanced they are. I don’t really know why the players here are so much more well rounded; I think it can be explained by the culture of basketball in which they were raised. One would think that the socialist leanings of most European countries would produce mindless automatons who care little about their personal abilities—a valid hypothesis that seems to remain true only in the Far East. (See also the blank expression worn by Yao Ming at all times.) In fact, the laid-back attitude toward life that most Europeans embrace produces skilled players. Coaches breed an attitude of “Why not?” As in why not be seven feet tall and handle the ball? Why not learn every position?

  European players are trained from an early age to see few limits to their skill sets. In the United States, coaches are anxious to pigeonhole players, if only to make their own jobs easier. It is much less time-consuming to teach a particular player half of the skills needed to play the game. Then the player can work on his abilities alone, becoming the cog his coach needs, without the coach expending excessive energy.

  My own team, Joventut, is famous for developing young players. In fact, the word Joventut means something to do with youth. (This fact brought to the reader via the explanation of several people I barely know. I do remember that joven means “young” in Spanish, so the theory seems plausible.) On my walk every day from the parking lot to the locker room, I see as many as five youth basketball teams practicing—all under the Joventut banner. Young coaches spend hours working with their pint-sized charges. Of course, they don’t do it for free. They are paid by the club, which is paid by its primary sponsor, DKV Seguros. (Seguros = “insurance.”) The result: my team’s actual name is DKV Joventut. Fitting, I suppose—the name itself is a microcosm for the state of European basketball. Leagues embrace sponsors, which finance teams and their coaches and, in turn, develop multitalented basketball players. It is a rather efficient system that—in an almost factory-like manner—churns out highly skilled young players year after year. I hope we catch on in the United States. If we don’t, the NBA might have to move to Europe.

  March 2

  I had an EMG on Monday. I recommend that anyone with sadomasochistic tendencies schedule one. I did not know this going in, but an EMG consists of a doctor (non-English-speaking, preferably) sticking needles in muscles and then instructing the test subject to flex the very same muscles whilst the needle is embedded in the muscle fibers. This is all, theoretically, a way to determine if the nerves in the corresponding area are damaged. After I was subjected to the torture session, I chatted briefly with the doctor who had performed the procedure. I told him about the injury in my best broken Spanish. When he learned that it had been only a week since the mishap, he chuckled heartily. It turns out that an EMG would not show anything so soon after a possible nerve injury. From what I could tell, it was his recommendation that I do nothing until another EMG could be performed at the appropriate time—three weeks from then. But I’m glad I had a trial run. My day would have been significantly less fun without someone jamming needles into my biceps.

  On Tuesday night, we had a ULEB Cup game against a team from Serbia. I, of course, did not play. Before the game, I was in the training room, receiving treatment on my neck/shoulder/arm. I was lying on my back as the physical therapist did some manipulation of my neck when one of the team’s doctors entered the room. The team has an official team doctor and another, older, more arrogant doctor who magically appears on game days and in time for team pictures. (Meaning that two people who speak limited English are trying to tell me what is going on with my neurons, axons, and dendrites.) The latter individual was the one lurking near my shoulder. He had developed a new theory. He thought that I had broken my thumb, which would explain why that digit remained numb. He wanted an X-ray done the next day. Everyone in the room rolled his respective set of eyes, which was very confusing, since his spiel had not yet been translated for me. When it was, I was rendered speechless. I am fairly confident that I would have remembered breaking my thumb. Next, in what must have been some sort of power play, Dr. Mephisto motioned the therapist working on me out of the way and took up a position at the head of the table on which I was lying. For a few seconds, he probed the muscles around my neck and then, without warning, jerked my head violently to the left. As a PG-13 version of the X-rated pain I had felt a week earlier again shot down my back and arm, I sort of curled up into the fetal position and let out a gasp. (I kept the yelping in this time—way to go, me.) As I lay in a ball, the doctor said something to everyone in the room and left. After collecting myself, I first told the therapist that I wanted the doctor’s family murdered and then asked what he had said. I was told, “Well, no X-ray tomorrow. He’s now convinced that there is definitely something wrong with the nerves.” I was quite happy to be of service to his greater intellectual development. At some point in the evening, this same doctor was asked what he thought about my situation. (I think he is the wizened figurehead to whom people look for medical answers. The other doctor is the brains behind the operation.) He told the inquisitive reporter that he thought there was “an injury to the nerve” and that I “would be out for one to two months.”

  The truth is that no one really knows how long the recovery will take. First step: I need normalcy to return to my thumb. Second: I would like to recover some strength in my shoulder and neck. Third: I would like a jetpack. Then I will worry about any return to the court. For now, there is nothing to be done other than daily treatments and conditioning drills with the strength coach. (My legs are fine, which allows me to do exactly what I want to be doing this time of year—mindless running drills.)

  I did find out some rather disconcerting news today. It seems that my team has secured the services of an American named Zendon Hamilton to replace me for a month. I am not sure how I feel about this. My agent assures me that my injured status will not preclude the team from paying me. He says that there is nothing to worry about—the Spanish league is a trustworthy one. I, being, well, me, am a little pessimistic after my play-for-no-pay experience in Greece. But I’m willing to be a sucker one more time.

  March 10

  My team lost by the appropriate margin in Serbia this week. (Again, in this ULEB Cup competition, advancement to the next round is based on the aggregate score of a two-game series—we won by fourteen the first game at home and lost by only nine in the second game in Belgrade, resulting in our advancement to the next round.) My replacement, Zendon Hamilton, has really played in only one game, our rec
ent loss in Valencia. He is a passable basketball player but is not much of a talker. Each time I meet an American who plays over here it becomes evident why the European players come to resent us so easily. Most of us look down our respective noses at the leagues here, and it shows in the attitude displayed.

  I learned that my new “teammate” in fact signed a contract through the end of the year. I was reassured, though, by the team president (through a translator) that I remained the team’s first choice, that as soon as I returned I would be back in the lineup. But Zendon Hamilton’s contract brings up an interesting question. If he starts playing well, would they truly send him home, or will they set up some sort of competition between us for the remaining spot? I should be in good shape for such a situation, coming off a month or more of layoff during which I could not use my right arm.

  In medical news: my right thumb is almost back to normal. The very tip is the only remaining region that continues to feel strange. Also, the nail has started to grow again; my thumb’s compatriots, the other nine fingers I possess, had lapped my thumb with regard to fingernail growth. My right shoulder is not in such good shape. It’s a strange feeling. My brain tells the muscles to work; they blatantly disregard the message. My shoulder and back muscles are like the dreaded ten-to-twelve-year-old age group at a basketball camp—they hear the instruction to do ball-handling drills, but it’s just more fun to continue the game of grab-ass.

  March 23